There's a ton going on in the world of live events. The updates are here on the Comms Check.

Friday, May 8, 2015

Industry Liability

The practice of protecting the
company from legal recourse over unknown occurrences is an essential activity
associated with running a business in the entertainment industry. As the demand
for services associated with the live events sector continue to rise, so does the
laundry list of liability concerns that event coordinators, producers and staff
must consider prior to show time. Based on the growing trend of separate
sectors (music, film, video games, etc.) incorporating live events to drive
traffic and raise brand awareness, the event coordination business has seen a
number of instances in which shows have been cancelled due to issues with
intellectual property rights.

In
February of this year, The Hollywood
Reporter published an article updating the status of proceedings between
recording artist and entrepreneur Jay-Z, and the estate of Egyptian film
composer Osama Ahmed Fahmy. The specification addressed was Jay-Z’s use of a
sample from the song “Khosara, Khosara” from the 1960 film Fata Ahlami (Gardner, 2015). In a lawsuit that has been active for
the last 8 years, Live Nation is now being pulled into the scrum by Fahmy’s
estate, which claims the concert giant knowingly promoted and profited from
Jay-Z’s performance of material that violated copyright. Situations like this
affirm the importance of indemnification clauses in contracts between concert
touring companies and artists.

Liability
manifests itself in many forms during a live event. None have been more
prevalent than personal injury lawsuits filed by patrons. The Buffalo News recently reported on an incident that culminated
in the filing of a $150 million lawsuit against Live Nation (Fairbanks, 2014). According
to the article, concert patron Jason McNeil was attending a Kid Rock concert
when an inebriated fan randomly punched him in the head. This lead to McNeil’s
lawyer pressing for the $150 million judgment, claiming his client “can never
work again.” In situations like this, there are a number of factors that can
discredit the arguments of either side. McNeil’s medical history needs to be
taken into consideration, to judge the validity of his lawyer’s claim. If he is
indeed found to be incapacitated to the point that he cannot gain employment,
then he should be compensated for such. However, if that isn’t the case, then
the remedy must be revisited to ensure that one side isn’t victimizing the
other with a frivolous and baseless lawsuit.